Peter Gabriel’s first album in seven years is a Bob Ezrin-produced orchestral covers collection called Scratch My Back. It reportedly features reinterpretations of the folks mentioned above along with Elbow, the Kinks, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Neil Young. It’s being called a “song swap,” which implies some artists will also cover Gabriel, or each other, though we don’t have all the details just yet. We do have a video of Gabriel and a string section doing Paul Simon’s “Boy In The Bubble,” before which he explains the project and introduces collaborator John Metcalfe, who’s said (at Gabriel’s site) that the album is acoustic, sans guitars, drums or “world instruments.” So, many strings. This take on the Graceland opener happened at the WOMAD festival in July. We also have a possible Scratch My Back tracklist, but you know how those things go.

No Vampire Weekend?
Any news from PG is good news, but it’s hard to get excited about an album of cover songs when we’ve been waiting so long for new stuff. He’s only put out two proper albums in the last 17 years.

Hmmm- trying to do a Johnny Cash maybe? I love Gabriel but this album is very hard to listen to- and I love Animal Collective!
It’s just a little boring- I will give it another go and decide whether it deserves to be bought on vinyl or not. I do agree though since So he has hardly been productive.

Peter Gabriel not productive? He hasn’t released new albums under his own name in 8 years, but he’s been running a label, putting on WOMAD events, curating the Big Blue Ball project that released a CD in 2008, touring and releasing every show of his 2007 European and 2009 Latin American tours.

He HAS changed the world, BTW, just mostly through WOMAD and RealWorld. No P.G., no mainstream world music, no Vampire Weekend, no fair trade music, or at least significantly less attention to any of those things. As for ‘doing a Johnny Cash’, remember even John Lennon and Patti Smith have done cover albums. Good or bad, there’s plenty of precedent.

“Scratch” may not be his best work, but I’m willing to give it a few extra listens just for being by P.G. If it doesn’t grow on me, there’s still plenty from his own catalog and his labels’ catalogs worth the repeats. And sooner or later he’s bound to put out something cool and unexpected.

Lazy and indulgent and I’d like my fifteen bucks back, but let’s face the facts, if Peter Gabriel put out a cd full of flatulence noises, we’d buy it. Look, there’s no bigger Peter Gabriel fan than me but surely after seven years he could come up with a better effort and one that involves original songs. I’m actually looking more forward to the companion piece that the other artists will do of his music, because it’s his music. C’mon Pete, just because Up wasn’t a critical/commercial success, “Don’t Give Up”!

i agree with gabriele (if my italian is right): why not listen and ask ourselves what was on peter´s mind when he made that album? is it “only” covers? and why? because he ran out of ideas? i´d say it´s a lot less risky to add a few more original songs to an existing catalogue of two or three hundred than do something completely different … no drums, no guits, just orchestra, piano and voice … that´s risky territory. i personally think he did it exceptionally well 80 % of the time … and one more thing: is his voice cracking? oh cmon … he´s had this coarseness since “so”, if not before. or listen to “a different drum” from the passion album. maybe he´s cultivated that husky, brittle voice? to add more nuances to his vocal repertoire? seems to me like he´s able to switch it on or off any time he wants.

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